CalMatters Staff

To figure out how California got in this situation, it’s helpful to rewind the clock to the late 1990s, back to the days of the dot-com bubble. That’s when the state and local governments chose to make pension benefits a lot more generous. It’s a decision that turned out to have lasting implications.

What is cap and trade? California’s cap and trade program is a tool for putting a price on pollution, specifically carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases, that businesses discharge into the atmosphere. The state sets limits—caps—on the volume of greenhouse gas that oil refineries, electricity providers, food-processing plants, paper mills, cement manufacturers and other companies […]

Sen. Holly Mitchell reacts to CALmatters article

Residential and commercial users consume most of California’s available power. Source: California Energy Commission

What is California’s Climate Change Plan? For decades, California has been a leader on environmental and climate change policies, including the Zero Emission Vehicle Mandate in 1990 and a “Clean Car” bill in 2002 that became a model for the National Fuel Efficiency Standards that President Obama announced in 2012. The California Air Resources Board […]

On the Left Coast, CALmatters issued its package on California climate change policies July 19. The material was published in four dozen newspapers, from the Los Angles Times to the Times-Standard in Euerka, and the audio version was aired by numerous public radio outlets throughout the state.

The new nonprofit news site has raised almost $3 million for explanatory reporting on state government and lawmaking. They’ve also been gathering advice — and advisors — from places like ProPublica and The Texas Tribune.

The Sacramento-based CALmatters will report exclusively on California state policy and politics and plans to both publish its stories on its own site and distribute them to other publications.

Gregory Favre learned early that transformational change in journalism was a fact of life.  When he was 8 years old, it was his mission to fold the newspapers at the paper his dad owned in Bay St. Louis, Miss. And, according to Favre, no one ever folded newspapers better. When he was 10, his dad […]